In the early part of the twentieth century

In the early part of the twentieth century, many vacationers found that driving automobiles and sleeping in tents allowed them to enjoy nature close at hand and tour at their own pace, with none of the restrictions of passenger trains and railroad timetables or with the formalities, expenses, and impersonality of hotels.

1 Explanation

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sumedh inamdar

This is a fantastic problem...with and, or, with, without and none!

Could you please elaborate on some general rules in this problem?

Apr 3, 2016 • Comment

Cydney Seigerman, Magoosh Tutor

Hi Sumedh!

Happy to help :) Firstly, while "with none of" and "without" are both grammatically correct and express the same idea, "without" is more concise. So, it's more likely that the correct option will use "without."

With that in the back of our minds, let's think about what the sentence is saying, paying particular attention to the underlined part. Overall, vacationers believed that driving and sleeping in tents allowed them to enjoy their vacations without having to deal with any of the things mentioned in the underlined part.

The use of "or with" in A and D does not convey this meaning--vacationers enjoyed their travels without the formalities, etc. listed in the second part.

B is incorrect as "restrictions" should refer to both passenger trains and train timetables. By eliminating "and", this meaning is not conserved in B.

Additionally, B and C lose the parallelism between the two parts of the description by dropping the second article "the". To maintain parallelism, the description should be in the form "without the X nor the Y."

This leaves us with E, which correctly uses the form "without the X or the Y."

Hope this helps :)

Apr 17, 2016 • Reply